The first document is the lineage chart.
Fourteen generations. Starting from Calder Rowan, First Beta, and moving down through the years in thin careful lines, each name and date written by a different hand as the record passed from one archivist to the next. Some of the early entries are in a script so old it takes me a moment to adjust to it, the letters formed differently, certain words abbreviated in ways that aren't used anymore.
I trace the line with my finger without touching the page. My mother's name is on it. Sera Rowan, née Calloway. Born year notation I do the math on — she was twenty-three when she had us. Died the same entry. Same year. The date of our birth and her death are the same date, recorded in the same handwriting, which means whoever was maintaining this document
